۳۳ مطلب با موضوع «فلسفه | Philosophy» ثبت شده است

Charles Taylor in ‘A Secular Age’ describes an emerging kind of belief -known as ‘believing without belonging’ as Grace Davie coined, or ‘nominalism- through a ‘penumbra’ effect. Although such believers are nominally Jewish, Christian, Muslim and so on, but they take a minimalistic approach to religion/faith and do not employ religious values, morality, and responsibility in their life beyond limited and occasional commitments to religious, social rituals. This diffused belief, however, plays a significant role in society if religion is being considered as ‘social glue.’

In the very first lines of the ‘Third Meditation’ Descartes expresses that by looking deep within himself he can assert that he is a ‘thinking thing.' He claims that although he is not sure about the existence of things outside himself but he is confident that the modes of thinking, e.g. imaginations and sensations, exist inside him. Then Descartes tries to find out whether there is any other knowledge he may possess. In this scrutiny, he lays down that everything is true if he can perceive it very clearly and distinctly. Descartes then questions his judgment whether it can be deceived by some God who might endow him with a nature that he could be deceived, even about what can be perceived very clearly and distinctly. Therefore, logically, Descartes should first examine if any God does exist. (Descartes 1984, 24-25)

In the 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript' Kierkegaard radically confronts what was the mainstream theological accent, i.e. to prove God and the authenticity of religious scriptures objectively with reasoning. It is crucial to differentiate his standpoint with who believe that faith and reason, subjectivity and objectivity, are two wings of the same bird and an individual can use either to find God.

In the ‘Dialogues on Natural Religion’, David Hume put forward various objections to the Argument from Design which is a central pillar of natural theology, including William Paley’s version of it. This note briefly explains the three most significant objections David Hume presented to the argument from Design.

In the Theodicy, Leibniz rehearses something like a trial in which God stands accused of having created a sub-standard world. In this note I demonstrate the basis of Leibniz’s case for the defence and his advocate for the view that the world God created could not have been made better.

It is being said that because the definition of mental disorder is always, at least partially, socially constructed we cannot have a ‘value-neutral’ psychiatry. I believe that having a ‘value-free’ psychiatry is tough, if not impossible.

Historically, some scientific results have been used to justify some sort of immoral actions and decisions, individually, in society, or globally. Based on this some argue that doing science when its results reasonably can be misused is not justified and have to be abandoned. Although I do agree that science in its nature is not completely value-neutral but I do not believe that we should avoid doing science when we have rational justification for believing that the outcomes will be misused. Thinking otherwise may imply at least two fallacies: the ‘One-sidedness Fallacy’ and ‘Perfect Solution Fallacy.'

Russell Gray’s, an evolutionary biologist and psychologist, in his lecture ‘The Evolution of Cognition without Miracles’ (Nijmegen Lectures, 2014) talks about two different explanations of cognition in animals (‘romantic’ and ‘killjoy’) based on evidences. These two explanations are the claim that some animals like chimpanzees a crows have sort of theory of mind or insights (romantic explanation); or do the evidences support this claim that those animals do not have any kind theory of mind and insights and such traits are uniquely human (killjoy explanation). However, there could be a third explanation.

Adrian Owen et al. in 'Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State' (2008) have used fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) activation patterns of neural activity as a supportive evidence to claim that a patient who previously was assumed to be in a vegetative state has intentional agency. However, it is questionable if such an approach and evidence is sufficient to conclude so.

Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) in their seminal work on ‘Extended Cognition’ or ‘Extended Mind’, demonstrated a fictional character, Otto, who has a notebook. For the notebook to be functionally identical to Otto’s memory it has to be available to him automatically, involuntarily, and reliably. However, it has been argued that as the notebook does not have these features it cannot be a part of Otto’s mind. I disagree with this claim that for a notebook to be functionally identical to one’s memory, it should be automatically, reliably and involuntarily available to him.

Dennett’s Frame problem manifests that building an artificial intelligence kindred to humans intelligence is impossible.” I disagree with the claim that only based on the Frame problem a human-like Artificial Intelligence (from now on AI) cannot be made. Although the frame problem in the field of AI is very similar to its homonym in philosophy, the latter one challenges a wider epistemological question considerably.

Abstract

It is being said that values should have nothing to do with scientific outcomes because science is about objective truth, not what we want to be true; and ‘cognitive science’ is no different. In this essay, I will challenge this notion and will argue that scientific practices are not value-neutral, but they are value-laden. It means that scientific research and outcomes are not just about objective truth. Also, they are not only ‘cognitive values’ that should be considered in practicing science, but ‘moral values’ also have to be taken into account. Cognitive science is not an exception to the range of the implications of these notions.

The key terms I will discuss are ‘value-neutrality of science’ and ‘value-ladenness of science.' Value-neutrality in science means that scientist has to keep her biases and emotions while dealing with scientific research, matter, and situation. Furthermore, scientific researches and outcomes do not imply any particular implications and are not a matter of value judgment because they are merely means to goals. On the other hand, value-ladenness of science says that scientists have not and cannot keep their biases and emotions while dealing with scientific research, matters, and situations. Also, scientists should not be indifferent regarding the implications and usage of the outcomes of their researches. This essay will provide three main arguments in defence of value-ladenness of science. Each of these arguments will follow with some objections and then some answers to these objections will be provided.

Classical physicalism, which is the doctrine in which the physical world is taken to be the only real world, has not provided a plausible account of consciousness. Consciousness experience is as mysterious as it is familiar. This is because although we feel consciousness as the most direct experience, we can ever have but we cannot describe it with an objective viewpoint. It means we cannot account it with any other things we used to interpret other natural events. Here we should differentiate between brain activities, that we can know about them objectively, and consciousness as a first-personal and subjective experience.

Fodor in The language of Thoughts while discusses some aspects of the theory of mental processes, introduces two kinds of reductionisms: behavioural reductionism and physiological reductionism. Either of these two, as he claims, departs psychology from studying its subject matter that is mental phenomena. However, he expresses that he is a physicalist.

This is a critical analysis of an imaginary scenario, although based on real cases, about a social issue in Australia: 'Ban the Burqa'. In this analysis, critical thinking techniques have been applied and the logical and rhetoric fallacies of the media release that has been provided by the imaginary scenario have been criticised. Supporting data is available as appendix to this analysis.

Peter Singer, arguably one of the most prominent living moral philosophers, has discussed moral status of animals in his seminal work ‘Animal Liberation’. In that book, he shed light on the various types of abuses human-animals carrying out on non-human animals. He innovatively coined the term ‘speciesism’ to point out the same fallacious reasoning humans use to abuses of non-human animals. He expressed that speciesism - belief in the superiority of one species over others - follows the same unsound rationale that ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ did.

Before proposing my opinion on the challenging question of righteous or wrongfulness of euthanasia, I have to clarify what I meant by this term by declaring the definition I do agree with that. Like many other terms, euthanasia has various meanings depending on the context and usage. The Oxford Dictionaries defines euthanasia as “The painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma” and counts mercy killing, assisted suicide, and physician-assisted suicide as its synonyms. More specifically in medical terms, it means the practice of ending a life intentionally to relieve patient's suffering and pain.

However, these lexical definitions fail to determine adequately euthanasia, as they leave some possible actions open that although they may meet the definition, they cannot be seen as euthanasia.

Epicurus (341-270 BC), whom Epicurean philosophy named after him, based his opinion on the institution of pleasure as the humans’ primary real good. In his viewpoint, a good life is one that in which pleasure -to be particular, pleasures with the subtraction of pains- is maximised. To do so, we have to minimise our pains, either bodily or mentally. However, knowing that death is one of the most mentally painful concerns for humans, Epicurus argued that we should not be fearful of death as it means nothing to us (De Botton 2000, 56-60).

Abstract

Asking about personal identity and its implications are of central questions in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and undoubtedly theology and eschatology. The essential components of this enquiry can be articulated by these questions: Who am I? What am I constituted of? What does differentiate me from others? How do I persist through time? Based on the responses to these enquiries various philosophical accounts of personal identity have been shaped: Substance Dualism, Property Dualism, Predicate Dualism, Continuity of Consciousness, Psychological Continuity, Bundle Theory, and No-Self Theory, to name a few. One of the essential problems in personal identity is identity persistence through time. This problem, which can be articulated as identicalness of an individual at time T1 to an individual at time T2, has significant implications for subsequent questions in the fields of ethics and philosophy of law. The proposed resolution for this problem brings out its practical consequences in ethics, agency, and responsibility.

As a response and alternative to Cartesian dualism, behaviourism was the widely accepted interpretation of human mind activities for most of the twentieth-century. Ryle as an analytical behaviourism philosopher argued that mental terms represent the style of behaviours or dispositions, not the internal states (Ryle, 2009, pp. 1-13). In contrary, Fodor questioned if Ryle’s theory can address all human behaviours as there are many mental terms that their dispositional versions require some other mental terms. He appended that, even though, all mental conditions can be analysed to their dispositional forms, it only defines mental terms while, on the other hand, psychology looks for causal analysis of mental activities. Fodor accused Ryle of confusing between conceptual and causal theories about the mind.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes argued that the mind and the body are independent but inter-correlated while the mind can exist without the body; what is known as essential dualism. Based on this theory, the mind is not a material thing because it has none of the properties that material things have such as spatiality and divisibility. However, there are some facts that challenge Descartes’ idea of the immateriality of the mind as well as its independence from the body. One of those facts that dualism cannot explain is what happens to some brain damaged people (Descartes, 2008, p. 14).

Descartes’ explore for certainty started out with doubts. He professed that as he had admitted many false opinions as true, his knowledge is dubitable; hence his beliefs are based on unsettled assumptions. Thus, he decided to reconstruct his views upon sound principles. Descartes wisely undermined the foundations of his understandings so that the rest of his thoughts would collapse consequently. To do so, he tackled the validity of senses-acquired knowledge. He also considered the possibility of being deceived, not only about the testimony of the senses, but also about the truth of arithmetical axioms and logical principles (Descartes, 2008, p. 14).

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes articulated his project toward finding indubitable knowledge by doubting all his beliefs. He did that by introducing an evil spirit devoted to deceiving humans (Descartes, 1984, p. 17). Some hundred years later, Buowsma challenged the role of the evil spirit in Descartes’ project by proposing two possible scenarios for the evil demon to produce illusions. He argued that none of these illusions work, as one is recognisable, so no longer will remain an illusion, and the other is not recognisable at all. If Buowsma is right, the aim of the demon’s tricks to plant the seed of scepticism in the human mind is not achievable (Bouwsm, 1949, p. 141).